Mingrelian-Imereti Committee

28/XI.

Dear Comrades,

We have received both of your letters, of the 23rd and 28th. The first (with statistics and addresses) fell into the hands of the minority and was delivered to us only today; we have noted the addresses and shall make immediate use of the address for sending literature. Your resolution in favor of the congress was received and transmitted to the Central Organ. We have heard nothing of any second counting of votes, and it is hardly likely there will be one.

A resolution from the Nikolaev Committee recently arrived and was forwarded to the Central Organ. Martov returned it with crude abuse, claiming that the Central Organ and Central Committee are reliably informed that there is no committee whatsoever in Nikolaev (a outright lie—the Central Committee itself traveled to the Nikolaev Committee with its declaration and knows perfectly well that the persons who signed the resolution are members of the Nikolaev Committee), that the resolution was sent by some self-styled impostors and swindlers who wrote a forged resolution.... The resolution of the Caucasian United Committee in favor of the congress

* The letter was written by N. K. Krupskaya on the instructions of V. I. Lenin. Ed.

has not been published, while the one that arrived against the congress has been printed. It has been published that the committees of Saratov, Samara, the Urals, and Astrakhan approved the policy of the Central Committee (no resolutions are cited), and yet on the very day this issue of *Iskra* came out, we received a letter from the Urals saying that they have heard nothing from the Central Committee for several months already and do not even know whether the party exists. Plekhanov states directly that there will be no congress.... Yet the Central Committee hypocritically declares that it is now not opposed to the congress, that one need only take care to ensure that the congress truly expresses the opinion of the party.... The Central Committee buries the resolutions of the committees, while in a leaflet to party comrades it says: "now that the party has spoken in our favor"...

The committees demanded literature of the majority from the Central Committee; the Central Committee refused to circulate it, claiming that it is not party literature in the first place, and secondly, it can give nothing for the development of the class consciousness of the proletariat. Ah, hypocrites! Evidently, Trotsky's new pamphlet, published under the editorship of the new *Iskra* and representing, to a certain degree, its "Credo," contributes greatly to the development of proletarian consciousness.... In the pamphlet it is asserted that there is a whole abyss between the old and new *Iskra*, that the congress was a reactionary attempt to consolidate cell methods of struggle, that the old *Iskra* had no concern for the proletariat, that the *Iskra*-ists call the proletariat blockheads, and so forth and so forth. It is no wonder that Struve praised the tendencies of the minority as vital.... (see Lenin's leaflet "The Obliging Liberal"*). Have you received the *Iskra* leaflet to all party organizations on the zemstvo campaign? In pursuit of a new, "higher" type of propaganda and agitation, *Iskra* has spouted much nonsense, even going so far as to say that demonstrations must be organized cautiously so as not to provoke panic fear among the zemstvo men.

Lenin answered this leaflet with the pamphlet "The Zemstvo Campaign and the Plan of *Iskra*"**...

Now that the Central Committee has entered into a deal with the Central Organ to prevent the congress, the congress will be postponed indefinitely

* See Collected Works, 5th ed., vol. 9, pp. 71-74. Ed.

** See ibid., pp. 75-98. Ed.